Funding gap threatens millions of Africa’s hungry, UN

New York, 11 May – (ANA) - A major funding gap is threatening efforts to boost food security and development in the Sahel region of West Africa and in the Horn of Africa in theeast, a senior United Nations official has warned. The Horn of Africa, which includes countries such as Somalia and Djibouti, experienced a food crisis last year that left an estimated 13 million people dependent on humanitarian assistance. Currently there are 15 million people facing food insecurity in the Sahel, which stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and includes countries such as Niger and Mali. “In the Horn of Africa we are losing the window of opportunity to build on our  recent achievements – which helped to overcome the famine declared last year in  Somalia – increasing the resilience of families facing drought,”  said the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, in remarks to the Foro Nueva Economía international economic forum in Madrid. The FAO chief said that boosting food security involved combining emergency  action with support for family farming and smallholder production, promoting development initiatives in the long term, and reducing vulnerability to extreme events. With one in every seven people in the world suffering from chronic hunger and malnutrition, “fighting hunger is a challenge too great for FAO or any government to overcome alone,” Mr.  Graziano da Silva added. “It must involve civil society, private enterprise, international agencies, and the governments of developing and developed countries. For this reason we have opened the doors of FAO to new allies with whom we share a common set of principles.”  (ANA)

FA/ANA/11 May 2012-------